How about a trio of goofy free games to help push on to the weekend? Today’s Download Discounts list starts with Puppet War:FPS, a strange first-person shooter in which you basically fight off puppets with weapons ranging from guns to a mop. After that, we have tough, tomato-throwing physics puzzler MadCap, and rounding things out […]

How about a trio of goofy free games to help push on to the weekend? Today’s Download Discounts list starts with Puppet War:FPS, a strange first-person shooter in which you basically fight off puppets with weapons ranging from guns to a mop. After that, we have tough, tomato-throwing physics puzzler MadCap, and rounding things out is Hungry Shark – Part 1. All three are free today.

Puppet War:FPS (iPhone, iPad) Free (was $0.99)

A janitor at a local television station, Puppet War finds you locked inside on the set of a beloved children’s television show — when suddenly, the creepy puppets populating the set come to life and attack you. At first you’re armed only with a mop, but more and more weapons become available as you defend yourself from wave after wave of puppets in this first-person shooter.

Puppet War is kind of a hilarious, if weird, take on the FPS genre, and it packs some great visuals, too. There are three difficulty levels, and OpenFeint support gives you a leaderboard and achievements to go with the game. You’ll also be able to unlock 15 different weapons to aid you in your puppet battle royale.

MadCap (iPhone, iPad) Free (was $0.99)

MadCap is a little like Angry Birds — it’s a physics puzzler in which you need to fling one object to hit another. But in this case, you control a swinging critter that throws tomato grenades at farm animals in an attempt to get revenge for their good fortune. Instead of a slingshot, you’ll have to time your throws based on the critter’s swinging movement, so timing is crucial to getting the right throw at the right angle.

There are 54 levels of fun physics game weirdness packed into MadCap. It also has support from Game Center for leaderboards. Developer iCon has also made 12 more levels available in a new free version of the game.

Hungry Shark – Part 1 (iPhone, iPad) Free (was $0.99)

You probably know the story with Hungry Shark: as a shark, it’s your job to patrol the waters and eat just about everything in order to keep your strength high. Eating other marine animals is easy — just get Jaws close to his pray and he snacks on it automatically. The tough part is navigating icebergs, underwater mines and other obstacles that threaten to trap you and cause you to starve to death.

Hungry Shark keeps things simple as far as gamepaly, using the iphone’s accelerometer to control its movements: tilt right to go right, left to go left, and so on. The longer you hold on, the bigger and more formidable your shark becomes.

Phil Hornshaw is a freelance writer, editor and author living in Los Angeles, dividing his time between playing video games, playing video games on his cell phone, and writing about playing video games. He’s also the co-author of So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide to Time Travel, which attempts to mix time travel pop culture with some semblance of science, as well as tips on the appropriate means of riding dinosaurs. Check out his Google+ profile.